The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto, launching off an anonymous-source-filled Washington Post story claiming a waterboarded detainee gave valuable intelligence, suggests that Dick Cheney may yet save America from the dangerously torture-free Obama administration:
If the Bush administration's policies really did keep us safe for 7½ years, then it stands to reason that the Obama administrations' policies may be endangering us now. Certainly that is how the public would see it in the event of another terrorist attack.
If that happens, heaven forbid, Obama will be seen to have failed in the most basic presidential duty, and the Bush administration will be vindicated. As inconceivable as it may seem today, the 2012 election may end up turning on national security. Republicans would be wise to nominate someone with both toughness and experience. Under such circumstances, it's hard to think of a better candidate--assuming, of course, that he could be persuaded to run--than Richard B. Cheney.
The Post wrote that "for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general's report and other documents released this week indicate." Of course, like Cheney, these defenders can only claim that detainees who were tortured gave valuable intelligence, not that one led to the other.